Producer John Frost on why the musicals never stop

A life in theatre is exactly what John Frost hoped for at age 14. He is photographed here at Balla in The Star Casino in Sydney.
Ryan Stuart

by
Michael Bodey

John Frost walks quickly into Balla restaurant four minutes early after his message he'd be 10 minutes late. He's wearing crisp theatre black. I'm used to seeing the live entertainment impresario in a jacket but the 64-year-old is pleased with how he looks at this stage in his rich showbiz life. He's smiling and upbeat.

He should be because his current show, the scandalously funny musical by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is exceeding commercial expectations.

The Book of Mormon is unfeasibly funny, yet, like the duo's under-rated 1999 film musical South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, it is scandalously coarse – at least for commercial theatre – and yet somehow very American.

"The first time I saw it I thought, hand on my heart, Australian audiences are just going to love this humour because it's so out there and walks a dangerous line at times," he explains. "…For some people."

The Book of Mormon has taken the world by storm. John Frost can boast of the Australian season that the musical has not had one unsold seat since it opened.
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That comes with self-confidence. Producers exude showmanship and across the years "Frosty the Showman" has defiantly razzle-dazzled when the chips were down. But here is a relaxed man who doesn't feel the need to perform for the interview or sell a ticket. After all, he "can honestly say" The Book of Mormon has not had one unsold seat since it opened. "Unheard of!"

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We meet in the airy Italian bistro fronting the harbour side of The Star casino complex on a rare blue-skied Sydney day between the autumn deluges. Frost's people chose the restaurant for its proximity to The Star's Lyric Theatre, where his next production, the musical adaptation of the 1992 film starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, The Bodyguard, opens April 27.

The "luvvies" in both of us would have preferred some wood-panelled bistro with walls adorned with showbiz caricatures in the middle of a theatre district, but Sydney doesn't have one.

Sad note

The Adelaide boy who moved to Sydney in 1970 laments the absence, easily reeling off the names of Sydney's theatres torn down during the 1970s and '80s, contrasting them with Melbourne's vibrant stages. "It is sad," he notes, adding the NSW government won't stump up for a new theatre. "And they probably shouldn't either."

Prinnie Stevens (left) and Paulini in rehearsals for The Bodyguard: The Musical.
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A maitre'd with a cultivated beard that would shame Ned Kelly arrives to run through the specials, most of which are wood-grilled whole fish. Frost demurs he won't drink "if that's all right" before mischievously encouraging me to order an expensive bottle for myself and report he ordered it.

He tries not to drink during the day now because it goes to his head. Of course, "we all did it years ago", he smiles, recalling bottles guzzled and afternoon naps on the couch back in the office. "As you get older, you can't do it; you want to be more productive and you have more people waiting on your decisions."

Frost orders the steamed snapper; no entree, no sides. He is serious about being switched on and in shape. His skin glows – "a little bit of moisturiser helps", he grins after the compliment – although he admits to needing to lose a little weight. His strangely folded arms during lunch confirm that peccadillo; he's not defensive in conversation, those arms merely cover his stomach. I have the same habit.

We descend into a little professional gossip, moving onto journalism's challenges and the diminution of arts coverage in Australia.

John Frost and business partner Ashley Gordon, right, in December 1985. At the time, they were called "Sydney's youngest theatrical partnership" and they were having a success with the Footbridge theatre at the University of Sydney.
Fairfax Media

That leads us to the stories not being covered at the moment, including the Sydney Theatre Company's recent mediocre run on New York's Broadway with The Present, starring Cate Blanchett.

I half expect Frost – who has won two Tony Awards there, for his revival of The King & I and then as a producer of Hairspray – to be scathing of a subsidised theatre company rolling the dice commercially overseas. Yet he's sanguine, noting it's "a good idea if they can get somebody to pay the bills so they can play Broadway or the West End. I support that definitely, but it's choosing the right show".

Flop in US

The Present was the wrong show.

It is sad we're not creating a lot of new ideas and new shows, says John Frost.
Ryan Stuart

"Obviously," he agrees. "So it's choosing the right vehicle to take over, whether it be an Australian play or a classic. But it is hard there."

Frost, who invests in the development of many Broadway and New York shows both for a return and as a down payment on possible Australian rights, admits he has no desire to conquer either city with an Australian project. Indeed, he concedes, his shows developed here haven't been strong enough to export.

No matter. Our live entertainment market is now robust enough to support successful Australian musicals without needing international runs, he notes. Frost is currently developing a musical version of the hit feature film based on the Louis de Bernieres novel, Red Dog, and throughout our meal he muses about other possible adaptations.

A tangent about our great actresses, and his admiration for Robyn Nevin and Judy Davis, leads him to lick his lips at the prospect of a musical version of The Dressmaker film, in which Davis starred.

Dame Julie Andrews with producer John Frost at the Sydney Opera House in late 2015, promoting their upcoming revival of My Fair Lady.
Nic Walker

Australia can sustain such parochial punts because "theatre audiences have grown enormously in the last 15-20 years".

"Now, if you want to book a show to go into any of the big theatres, here in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, you're looking at 2020, '21 to get a decent set of dates."

The big musicals and plays set to arrive soon are clear enough: the smash hit Hamilton, this month's Olivier Award-winning show written by Australian Tim Minchin, Groundhog Day, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and eventually Disney's adaptation of Frozen.

He doesn't have a piece of any of those shows, so it must be doubly frustrating that known properties from film and literature are crowding the musical space?

Past success

He sighs. "Often I'll think, 'Oh, not another one?' "

You once had the other one, I tease, referring to his failed stage adaptation of the film, An Officer and a Gentleman.

"I did. And now I'm doing The Bodyguard!" he roars in good humour before quickly adding the caveat – "although The Bodyguard's a lot better than Officer.

"It is sad we're not creating – this is worldwide – a lot of new ideas and new shows, and we are relying on Warner Bros or MGM or whomever rehashing their ideas. But some of the biggest hits I've had – Dirty Dancing, Grease, Rocky Horror – have just done massive business, just massive, so certainly there's an audience for it."

The food arrives. My meaty octopus from Fremantle is the pick. Frost doesn't dive into his snapper. Conversation prevails.

We mull the precarious life of the producer. In the last two decades a few big names have exited the business and a couple of music promoters have incurred multi-million dollar losses.

Frost has survived and, yes, he's invested carefully elsewhere.

During the early 2000s, Frost partnered with James Erskine and Basil Scaffidi's Sports Entertainment Ltd (SEL), an unlikely combination of hard-nosed sports marketers with an apparently profligate showman. The partnership with Erskine "just felt like a natural progression" for Frost who owned the rights to Grease but didn't have the expertise or muscle that SEL had to make it the arena spectacular for audiences of 16,000 that Frost had wanted.

Frustration

It was a formative period. "As frustrating at times as they were, they disciplined me into respecting the dollar, which was a great thing and I can only attribute to working with James Erskine," he says. "We all made quite a lot of money during those years and before working with them, we didn't."

He re-formed the Gordon Frost Organisation and "since [then] it's only gone shwoop!" he gestures, his hand flying up on a 45-degree projection. He learnt to employ a tight team of 11 who are "much smarter people than I'd worked with" and "we just upped the ante".

His now stable "big bevy of investors" allowed him to do so. They invest as little as $25,000, or as much as a million in each show. And they keep coming back.

But who are they? Frost is relaxed enough to almost reveal the names of about 20 people who have a bit of money invested elsewhere but who one day realised annual dividends just aren't that exciting. They want something more, and it's no coincidence some of them also invest in racehorses. They're a mix of unlikely business owners and "people you would never even think about".

"I have this big Jewish group in Melbourne, a big group in Brisbane…" he enthuses.

At this point at lunch, one might expect a theatrical type to be lurching between gossip, regrets and laughs yet Frost is sober, has barely touched his snapper and is thoughtful.

Early ambitions

He wistfully recounts leaving Adelaide at 15 – he had grown up in the city's "rough and ready" housing estate of Ferryden Park, north of Adelaide, with dreams of live performance bolstered by a steady diet on his black and white TV of Hollywood movies, The Mavis Brampton Show and Graham Kennedy's In Melbourne Tonight.

A dalliance with amateur theatre in his early teens convinced Frost he was better suited backstage than centre stage and, after leaving school at 15, he became a dresser on a JC Williamson production of Mame.

He recalls being woken at 2am on the train as the Mame production crossed the Nullarbor to be told his waterside worker father had died. After the funeral, he bussed to Perth to rejoin the troupe, and theatre has been his family ever since – with no desire to return to Adelaide as prodigal son.

"God, no! I once had a fantasy of doing an Adelaide Festival, thinking that could be fun bringing out all the smart stuff I wanted to do but couldn't do commercially, a festival for the people!" he laughs, still quietly revelling in the prospect. "It'd be hailed!"

I suggest Frost has actually lived the life he desired as a 14-year-old. "Exactly," he agrees. He wanted to be a successful producer, even if he didn't quite know what they did.

"I wanted to run the show, go to New York and see lots of shows there, go to London and see lots of shows there, and have friends there and win a couple of smart awards, it'd be wonderful. Be careful what you wish for."

Does he have existential crises that showbiz is all there is?

Not at all, he replies quickly, recalling recently sitting in an audience of 1500 people at the opening of his revival of My Fair Lady, directed by Julie Andrews. "I thought, it doesn't get better than this," he smiles.

I ask about the Gordon in GFO, Ashley Gordon. Frost is thrilled to be asked, quickly saying "I'll tell you" before chuckling at how scammers still call his office saying they had a drink with "Gordon Frost" who'd arranged free tickets.

Old school theatre

He launches into a tale of old school theatre, arms waving and broad smiles and delicious details. They met in Melbourne when Frost was stage manager for a production starring Googie Withers, John McCallum and Frank Thring.

Two years later, the duo staged Martin Sherman's play Bent and took a lease on the University of Sydney's Footbridge Theatre, in partnership with Noel Ferrier (he wanted it to be called Ferrier's Footbridge with a neon of him smoking a cigar lighting up Parramatta Road).

Gordon was the risk-taker pushing the laid-back Frost, before he became one of the first in Sydney's gay community to die of AIDS. Frost is both sentimental and pragmatic about their relationship.

He has retained the GFO name because Gordon was his business spark even though he knows their partnership would have inevitably dissipated.

"It was another stepping stone for me to become my own person," Frost says, before a generous farewell, off to "terrorise his staff" – and not nap on his office couch.